After spending the winter break mostly sleeping as I was quite sleep deprived for most of the fall quarter, I started off the first week of the quarter refreshed and ready to spin my heart out. By the end of the fall quarter, I had filled one bobbin up with yarn and after plying half of it (the other half inexplicably became such a tangled mess that it had to be scrapped) I had a skein of about 445 yards. Considering that I need about 4,000 yards to create my chiton, I have my work cut out for me.
It seems fitting that my winter quarter be preoccupied with spinning. Winter is a time for staying inside, whether or not there is a pandemic going on. It’s a time for hibernation, to be home with loved ones where it’s warm and dry, and focusing on hobbies and chores until the sun comes back and the daffodils bloom to herald spring. Fiber arts, such as spinning, would have been one of those hobbies/chores.
Unfortunately, it seems that my wool has some issues that I never picked up on because of my health issues last fall. Seriously, sleep deprivation really messes with a person. I’ve only started to notice now that some of my wool is quite weak. Wool should have some stretch, similar to, though not necessarily as much as, a human hair. If I pull on on a few fibers, they should stretch a bit and then break. Some parts of my wool do this, and other parts just break and with very little effort. The weak wool fibers are bad enough that even if I have a good amount in my hand twisted together and I pull, they rip even though I’m not trying very hard. This is not good.
This is some of my wool I pulled from the roving I combed. 
This is that same wool after I pulled the ends with very little force. Wool is normally stronger than that.
The yarn produced from this fleece will have weak sections that I don’t trust to handle tension. It’s perfectly fine for weft, but the idea of using it for warp is nerve-wracking. It might be fine, or I might have multiple warp threads breaking while I’m weaving. I’ve decided I’d rather be safe than sorry and buy different wool. I don’t have time to process another fleece, so I’m hoping to by roving from a farm – the sheep will have been raised there and the fleece will have been processed by the farm owners and/or a local mill. In this way I can still execute my project in an ethical manner.
Besides wool, I was finally able to successfully request a book through the Interlibrary Loan successfully. Last quarter, I tried to request the book Archéologie des textiles : des origines au Ve siècle : actes du colloque de Lattes, octobre 1999. It’s a collection of conference papers about textile archaeology, and it contains two chapters that have been referenced in several things I have read. One of the chapters is about spinning in the home in ancient Greece (this is the one I am incredibly interested in) and the other talks about natural dye establishments. I can’t find these chapters in JSTOR or any databases and the book isn’t available through the Evergreen library or Summit. As I mentioned earlier, I tried to request the book in the fall, but there was some miscommunication regarding the fact that it’s mostly in French and it was assumed I wanted an English translation, which isn’t available in any libraries in the US. The chapters I want are in English and – fun fact about me – my French skills aren’t too shabby. But, the pandemic has made everything chaotic and my request was lost. I tried again last week and after some back and forth (because of the pandemic, many libraries aren’t willing to lend physical items) and hard work from the Interlibrary Loan librarian, she found a library that would lend me the book. This feels like a good omen to me for the quarter.